


Microcosmic

by SchrodingersShanu



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Slice of Life, enemies to sexy enemies, my dude hyungwon has very long hair and works in advertising, my dude minhyuk is recovering from heartbreak and works in a marketing firm, side pairings: yeojoo/sangah; shownu/wonho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29858589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SchrodingersShanu/pseuds/SchrodingersShanu
Summary: Did you know it wasn't big bang but hyunghyuk meeting and banging that actually started the universe? DID YOU? No. Well, this is that story.(The prologue sets the wrong tone. The fic is NOT ANGSTY.)
Relationships: Chae Hyungwon/Lee Minhyuk, Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Minhyuk (Monsta X)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 38





	1. Pilot Episode

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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## Prologue

The problem with long-term relationships is that when you do eventually break up, you end up lying on your friend’s couch instead of your bed on a Sunday at 11 pm because you never bothered to put your name on the lease with your fiance – and now after six years, all you have to show for it is a pity-couch, a backpack, two packed suitcases, three cardboard boxes and the dreaded observation that you don’t really know who you are now.

Because see, we are social creatures, we grow around people. We have a different personality with our friends in public and a different personality with our partner in bed. And the thing about Minhyuk’s relationship with Jaehyun was that Minhyuk liked his personality with him. Jaehyun was younger but more serious, so adorably sincere, and such a fucking brilliant listener that it gave Minhyuk room to act young with him, be the fun one, learn to not take himself so seriously because Jaehyun was always there to take things seriously for him. He liked that version of Minhyuk very much, and perhaps that was why, even though the spark faded ages ago, it took them a year to acknowledge and months of trying to finally call it quits.

All this is to say that Jaehyun and Minhyuk broke up a week ago, and his very hard squinting at Jaehyun didn’t make him leave the apartment to Minhyuk, so now Minhyuk has to start again, find another place, another sense of fulfillment and another personality while he is at it.

He’ll get to it all but for now, he is a man sitting on his friend’s couch, his existence as a person for the past six years packed and ready to go. The only plan he has for his Sunday night is this ukulele in his lap that Jaehyun gifted him four years ago.

He could invent a new personality – the one that played the ukulele and wore fedora hats or something. But shit, he can’t even play it.

It’s the satanic moan of the third chord that makes him change out of his shorts and go to a “treasure-hunt-slash-birthday-party” that his colleague was hosting for her housemate and had invited him to.

He doesn’t have any friends except us, so I am just inviting random people to fill up space, Yeojoo had said, and while it’s not the most flattering invite, Minhyuk would very much prefer to be the random person filling up space than the ex-fiance filling up a couch with a ukulele that he can’t play.

***

It’s not until one month and two days later as he puts his fingers in Hyungwon’s very long hair while Hyungwon unbuttons Minhyuk’s shirt and kisses his neck and says things like “Not my hair, sweetie” before lifting his hands and pinning them to the bed with a polite smile that makes Minhyuk feel feral that Minhyuk thinks about the other timeline where Minhyuk kept sitting on the couch and kept trying to play the ukulele and – for good or for worse – never met Hyungwon.

***

## Episode 1: Pilot

“You live in a…spooky hospital?” Minhyuk asks, looking back and forth between the steel chairs and the counter.

“Yup,” Yeojoo says, writing down his name on a sheet on the cardboard, looking more like a general at army training than a friend organizing a party.

“Are you a squatter?” Minhyuk says, kicking the balloon that had fallen from the ceiling. Looking at the decorations, Minhyuk guesses that Yeojoo’s friend might be an 8-year-old.

Yeojoo looks up from the cardboard and gives his balloon kicking feet a stink eye. “It’s called a ‘guardianship’. They let us live in abandoned buildings for cheap rent to preserve the building and avoid squatters until they rebuild it or whatever.”

Reading Minhyuk’s interest as malice – because Yeojoo interprets 98% percent of human expressions as malice – she lifts her nose. “Sangah and I are saving money for the wedding. That’s all.”

“Of course, of course,” Minhyuk says, looking around. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me and my wedding binder that I made at age 8 that weddings are costly.”

“Till the time you wed, the AI androids ruling us would not allow it.”

Minhyuk winces. “Ouch. You don’t hold any punches, do you?”

“Sangah says that everyone needs a friend like me, so I shouldn’t change and keep punching everyone.”

“Sounds kinda sweet.”

“She also says that every man regardless of his orientation especially needs to be punched in the nuts just because.”

“She sounds like a revolutionary.”

“She is a rapper.”

Minhyuk puts a hand on her shoulder in faux sympathy. “Oh honey, I am so sorry.”

Yeojoo imitates the gesture with the same sincere expression. “Me, too.”

They grin at each other – one of the few expressions that Yeojoo doesn’t consider malicious – when a hand taps Minhyuk’s wrist.

When Minhyuk looks up, he finds himself the target of a shit-eating grin coming from the face of a beautiful hipster wearing a hoodie with shorts, his very long hair tied in a French braid.

“Hi,” the hipster says, giggling.

Behind him, Yeojoo rolls her eyes. “He is such a light-weight.”

Confused, Minhyuk extends his hand, eyes still stuck on the man’s hair. It probably reaches his waist when he unties. Minhyuk squints. How does he manage in the summers?

The man grabs his hand and puts it against his heart. “I am Chae Hyungwon. It’s my 27th birthday. Happy birthday, Hyungwon!”

“Uh- same to you,” Minhyuk says, wide eyes stuck on his palm on Hyungwon’s chest.

“Thanks,” Hyungwon says, eyes glinting with the entrepreneurial spirit of a con-artist.

“Uh- Can I have my hand back?”

“Nope. Finders keepers.” Hyungwon deadpans. Leaning closer, he sniffs. “You smell like candy and look like my favorite porn star.”

“Thank you?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Hyungwon trills. Minhyuk imagines a vulture circling over a corpse. “You are such a tiny and pretty man!”

Minhyuk looks at Yeojoo as she slowly starts backing away. She shrugs and leaves him to his own devices.

“Sweetcheeks, look at me!”

“Um.”

Hyungwon pulls him into a tight hug. “So tiny.”

Minhyuk stands there like a plank before slumping into Hyungwon, his face against Hyungwon’s shoulder.

The giving in to the hug is not for a horny reason.

Okay, maybe _a little bit_.

Hyungwon is handsome, drunk, sort-of-complimenting Minhyuk. He is only human, sue him. But more than horniness, it’s the intimate human touch he didn’t even know he needed that makes him cling to Hyungwon even tighter.

Hyungwon hugs him like a dragon hugs his treasures and there’s really no need for such drama – they just met, after all – but…it just feels nice, okay?

Minhyuk wraps his arms around Hyungwon’s shoulders and closes his eyes.

Hyungwon tightens his grip. “Wanna smash, pumpkin?”

***

“And then he goes, ‘not even a little groping over the clothes?’ like a _creep_ , and I am just standing there, thinking about Jaehyun and how he never talked to me like this,” Minhyuk says, flinging the hand that’s not holding a beer. “We met at a club like normal people and had a normal first date with all shy smiles and curious questions, and here’s this dude at this party who is the first person I feel attracted to after such a long time, and in the first conversation that we have, he says things like, ‘Sad to see you go, can I video you walking away?’ and it’s like,” Minhyuk makes a throttling gesture, “ _oh, oh, oh_ how the mighty have fallen. _Ugh!_ “

“You are a light-weight too,” Yeojoo responds, ignoring Minhyuk in favor of marking things on her notebook.

Minhyuk grunts and looks up. Hyungwon is standing on the other side of the hall, holding a girl’s hand with the same grin that he was using on Minhyuk two hours ago.

Minhyuk takes a deep sip of his beer, eyes boring into Hyungwon.

_Fuck you, smiley bastard._

“You are still sad,” Yeojoo says from beside him.

Minhyuk blinks and looks down, missing Hyungwon’s gaze flicking at him.

“Am not.”

Yeojoo pats his back. “I am sorry.”

Minhyuk gets up. “It’s fine. I just need another beer.”

***

The thing is that he is fine most of the days. _He really is!_ But, then there are nights where Minhyuk is lying down on the couch, no sleep behind his eyelids, heart wrinkled like a toffee wrapper – the distance between him and Jaehyun of one bus and many hurtful words away as he alternates between crying silent tears for the waste of it all and just staring up at the empty ceiling feeling no potential in anything.

He is fine during the mornings. He jokes around with his colleagues and goes out for drinks with them, but then comes evil night and turns the steel of his bones into a malleable dough.

During those nights, he is forced to tuck his face between the crease of the couch and expand his existence into something universal. He thinks about the little kids he saw on the traffic light rattling their empty bowls at him. And then he is crying for them. It’s selfish, but it’s so much better to appropriate the tears of empty stomachs than to be a pathetic little bitch crying over a boy that could be blown by a wind. Where’s the fucking beauty in that? Where’s the fucking beauty in loving really? All of this is so ugly _._

“Aw. Tiny man looks sad,” comes the infuriating voice of one Chae Hyungwon from behind him.

Minhyuk sighs and takes out a beer can from the ice bucket, moving his elbows exaggeratedly in the hopes of hitting something – preferably Hyungwon’s crotch. Turning around, he gives Hyungwon a blank stare. “I am literally almost as tall as you.”

Hyungwon lifts a finger. “Biologically, maybe. But, spiritually,” Here, for some reason, he looks down at his crotch and Minhyuk unintentionally follows, “ _tres grande_.”

Ugh, Minhyuk hates him.

“Leave me alone, drunk man. I am sad.”

Hyungwon takes off his glasses and puts them on Minhyuk. Before Minhyuk can comprehend what’s happening, he stares right into Minhyuk’s eyes and Minhyuk stares back.

It’s all a little YA-novel kind of magical until Hyungwon fixes the wisps escaping his braid and Minhyuk realizes that Hyungwon is staring at his own reflection, and because it can’t get any worse, he gives Minhyuk a smile before putting his glasses back and says, “I can fuck it out of you.”

“What?”

“I can fuck it out of you. The ‘it’ in question being your sadness.”

The pathetic thing about it is that Minhyuk actually considers it because even though Hyungwon’s disrespectful mouth says these ridiculous things, his hands are folded, his head is bowed and he looks so polite and pathetic that it makes Minhyuk feel less pathetic and spread his legs for the freak.

Minhyuk considers it until he sees Hyungwon peeking up before going back to his hunched posture, curling even more, doing his best my-ice-cream-just-fell-mommy impression.

Minhyuk points at the blue and green hospital bins. “I bet the bins have better things to say to me.”

Hyungwon moves towards the bin in excitement. “They can speak? If they can speak, then they can consent!”

Minhyuk picks two more beer bottles and turns back to the main hall.

***

“Heard from the grapevine that you are the sad one?” says a tiny woman that Minhyuk identifies as Sangah from the photo in Yeojoo’s cubicle.

“Lies,” Minhyuk slurs.

Sangah looks him up and down, tilting his face up with a finger. “Such beautiful sadness.” She says with an unnerving intensity. “I want to make a rap about it. Have lunch with me and Yeojoo sometime.”

“S-sure.”

_“And the fourth team is Bona and-“_

Minhyuk sees Hyungwon mouthing “me” behind Bona which gets completely ignored by Yeojoo who stays focused on the planned agenda on her notebook and shouts “ _Jooheon!_ ” into her megaphone.

“Oh, come on!”

The girl looks a little sad while looking at Hyungwon until Jooheon comes out from the crowd and gives his dimpled smile and then the girl dumps Hyungwon faster than the bucket of ice-cold water Minhyuk wants to throw at Hyungwon.

“Man, I thought we had something!” Hyungwon shouts at Bona who moves away to stand beside Jooheon.

“Yeah, but look at his thighs!” Bona shouts back. Beside her, Jooheon’s ears start tinging red.

“Yeah, that’s my baby for you. He does have delicious thighs.”

“Shut up, Hyungwon,” says Jooheon, now looking at the verge of passing out or ascending into tomatohood.

_“The next team is Hyungwon and-”_

Minhyuk isn’t quite sure how a 6-feet drunk man accomplishes the improbable feat of crossing the hall faster than the speed of sound but somehow Hyungwon manages it.

_"-Minhyuk."_

“Fuck, no,” Minhyuk says in disbelief.

“Fuck yes, best birthday ever!” Hyungwon exclaims, wrapping his arm around Minhyuk's shoulders in that dizzyingly overfamiliar way of his.

Ugh, gun to a head.

Either Minhyuk’s or Hyungwon’s – he isn’t picky.

***

“For your next location, dig into your brain with a scalpel,” Hyungwon says, reading out the third clue. His face contemplative like The Thinker, his hand holding Minhyuk’s shirt like The Toddler.

“It’s obviously the former surgery rooms, but which one?” Hyungwon says to himself.

Turns out that his partner in death is surprisingly into the treasure hunt. 15 minutes have passed and Hyungwon has found 3 clues – all on his own. For Minhyuk, this has been a boon because Hyungwon channeling his inner competitive nerd has meant less yapping and more holding hands.

Minhyuk isn’t quite sure how to feel about it.

Because on the one hand, it’s nice to hold a warm human hand but on the other hand that warm hand is attached to a person who has been looking for a, ahem, hole in all the recycle bins that they have been passing.

It’s sort of a mixed bag.

“Duh, the neurosurgery rooms! Come, pumpkin.”

Right on cue, Hyungwon grabs Minhyuk’s hand and starts dragging him. The pumpkin sighs, but like a plastic bag sexually attracted to the polluted wind, goes along without any protest.

The former neurosurgery room is now empty of any kind of hospital furniture, but the permanence of the slab and counters with white tiles is so unmistakably that of a hospital that Minhyuk feels off. A birthday party in a place of wrong snips and possible deaths seems sacrilege bigger than that of temples to a rationalist like Minhyuk. And yet people live here.

“Wanna get up?”

Minhyuk doesn’t understand the question but nods anyway. He really should be careful because Hyungwon is batshit crazy – the assessment proven correct in the next moment as Hyungwon hoists Minhyuk up like a child, planting him on a slab. He might as well tie a napkin around his neck and put a binky in his mouth.

“Now be a good boy and sit here quietly while daddy finds the next clue.”

Words are futile in Hyungwon’s delusional bubble, so Minhyuk kicks his crotch. Hyungwon winces and goes to work.

Minhyuk looks around, taking a sip of the scotch he put in the empty beer can.

The juxtaposition of a treasure hunt in a hospital is unnerving but there’s also an optimistic story of resilience and adaptation here. Something scientific and philosophical at once.

Minhyuk takes another big sip.

Forget about Charles Darwin’s finches – nothing to them, boring shite. This is where the meat is. The tenants of this hospital – Minhyuk’s…whores. The title could use some workshopping but the content is there. This unromantic version of human triumph. That we can adapt to any circumstance with enough time.

Because see, for Minhyuk, a new guest, the situation is unsettling but for the people here-

“God, did she have to stuff the clue in the room where the toilet paper hoarder keeps her treasure.”

-this place is nothing but a building made of bricks that they rent at a low cost.

Minhyuk is sure there are bigger lessons to learn here but who gives a shit about bigger things; he needs to fucking move on from Jaehyun. That’s the actual fucking lesson here.

What else could the universe be nudging him towards in this depressing as fuck place anyway?

“Found it,” Hyungwon says and bends down.

Minhyuk objectifies him for a second before snapping out of it but the damage is done.

“I can feel you staring at my ass.”

Minhyuk scoffs. “You wish.”

“Of course, I wish. You need to see what you would be holding onto tonight,” Hyungwon sing-songs, his face tearing with another drunken grin as he looks at what must be the next clue in his hands.

Hyungwon’s eyes _twinkle_ – Minhyuk dares you to find any other word for it – the apple of his cheeks rise, his face hollows, and every feature on that could-pull-off-a-prince-masquerading-as-a-pirate face of his shifts just a little maddening length until Minhyuk is thinking of his former golden days of summer vacations: his naked feet swinging from a mango tree, his grandma making him a lemonade, his friends waiting for him in the nearby field with a ball.

Minhyuk looks away, and the next day is Monday, he would have to take a cab instead of a bus because he still hasn't prepared the presentation like he was supposed to. Because the grind never fucking ends, and even on the weekends, he is not allowed to rest.

Minhyuk looks at Hyungwon’s smiling face again – somehow brighter than before – and he is back again in his happy place. The water shines like a sea of diamonds as he lays back in the shallow river, bare minimum mimicry of swimming; the water takes over and floats him to places.

It’s an absolutely beautiful, first-grade, unparalleled utopian smile, and Minhyuk, very much drunk, feels like a shoe caught in a fish hook.

Hyungwon looks up at him in question and Minhyuk realizes that yes, there’s a 85% possibility that he would be holding onto Hyungwon tonight.

***

“Whose room is this?”

The room in which they are standing looks _habitable_. Yes, that’s a nice word for it. Someone has lived in it like a man abandoned on an island. It’s a cry for help, no more, no less.

In the room, there is a mattress, a plastic table with a garden chair. On it, there is a reading lamp and a mountain of books and notebooks. On one corner of the room, there is a small fridge, a stove, a half-open suitcase with clothes spilling from it, and a stool with a backpack lying against it. So much clutter with no organization. A clear rebellion against the stern ways of their mother and the civilization.

“Don’t know. Probably some nerd,” Hyungwon grunts in that I-just-care-about-winning-this-treasure-hunt way of his.

All this hard work for nothing – kinda cute.

Hyungwon flips the mattress upside down. “Where is this stupid clue?”

“Dude, would you chill out? This is someone’s room. They would be pissed.”

Hyungwon takes something out from under the mattress, glances at it, and pockets it. Minhyuk guesses that that’s the end of the treasure hunt.

“What’s the reward then?” Minhyuk asks.

There is a look in Hyungwon’s eyes as he stares at Minhyuk. His gaze is focused, analytical but also weirdly heady. Minhyuk fidgets.

The look in Hyungwon’s eyes vaporizes into the inherent evil he was borne of and bathed with as he smiles politely. He offers his hand and Minhyuk puts up a brilliant show of rolling his eyes before putting his palm there. It’s not Minhyuk’s fault that he is alcohol warm, and heartbreak horny.

Hyungwon leads them to the mattress and _okay, okay, Minhyuk is going to do it_. He is going to have a one-night stand with a stranger in an abandoned hospital.

They lie down. Hands held, bodies open, eyes and heart closed. There is silence, it’s beautiful.

A minute passes.

There is still silence, and it’s still beautiful.

Ten minutes pass.

There is still silence, _and this is some grade-A bullshit!_

“Oy,” Minhyuk mutters, eyes still closed. Going by the deep breaths beside him, he has a sneaking suspicion.

When the quiet doesn’t unquiet, Minhyuk shakes the hand he is holding. “Did you fall asleep?”

A moment as small as an amoeba and as big as the feeling of disappointment that encompasses Minhyuk passes.

“I really need this,” Minhyuk says to the passed-out Hyungwon. He crushes Hyungwon’s limp hand in his palm. “Wake up.”

Nothing happens. Hyungwon stays asleep as if he isn’t the most important thing that Minhyuk needs at the moment. Sure, no one has proved that the sadness inside you can’t be fucked out, that the knot inside your chest that swells at unpredictable moments can’t be reached by a cock in your throat but there’s always a first for everything. They could be the co-scientists with this thesis. They only need a little application and proof.

Minhyuk pinches Hyungwon’s cheek. “Wake up, you are going to fuck me. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Come on!” Hyungwon manages to stay passed out through it all, so Minhyuk gets up, takes out a water bottle from the mini-fridge, and empties it on the sleeping prince.

“Wh-What!” Hyungwon slurs, eyes blinking slowly.

Minhyuk palms his face and gives him what he considers his most harmless smile. “Hi. Happy birthday. Fuck me.”

***

“So, let me get this straight,” Minhyuk says, tone somewhere between anger and confusion. “This whole while you weren’t drunk at all?”

“No,” Hyungwon says, wiping his face with Minhyuk’s handkerchief, “Oh my god. For the tenth time, I am sober. I don’t drink!”

“But, you- you were all giggly and- and- drunk!” Minhyuk says, an accusing finger pointed at Hyungwon who is sitting across him on the mattress.

“I was acting.”

“Why!”

Hyungwon flings his hands. “Just because.”

“That makes no sense.”

“You prettiness doesn’t make any sense,” Hyungwon says, no soul in his voice.

“Shut up. Tell me.”

Hyungwon shrugs. “I can’t drink or even smoke a joint and shit like that because my paternal side of the family doesn’t have the best record with any kind of substance, so precaution is better than cure and all that. But I still wanna feel it, so somedays I just pretend that I am drunk or high when my friends are. They buy it, it makes my brain buy it. We dance and have fun. End of story. Happy ever after.”

Is this man for real? Where do you even begin? Which part do you even dissect? How about the part where all of Hyungwon’s antics and compliments have made Minhyuk horny, so even if he is sober, why can’t he just fuck Minhyuk?

“…fuck me.”

Hyungwon laughs, unbraiding his wet hair. “That’s what you took from that?”

“Yes.” Minhyuk plops down on the mattress. Covering his eyes with his arms, he pouts. “I don’t understand why your questionable lifestyle has to include not putting your cock in me.”

Hyungwon shrugs again, a knowing smile on his face. “Can you pass me the towel? It’s under your head.”

Minhyuk flings the towel at Hyungwon’s head and plops down once more to continue with his pouting. “Just, like, get it inside me. In any way.”

“There is something going here and I am not getting involved in,” He gestures at Minhyuk’s form, “all of this.”

Minhyuk hits Hyungwon’s knee without looking. “Rude. I liked pretending-to-be drunk Hyungwon so much better. Bring him back.”

Hyungwon catches his calf and puts it on his thigh. “Aw, tiny man is sad that he can’t have drunk sex which he can regret in the morning and use to throw a pity-party for himself. This is so cliché. You are lucky that you are pretty.”

The mocking tone hurts, the words even more so. And Minhyuk hates that he has a semi.

Minhyuk curls into himself and tries his best to will it down.

Hyungwon’s hand in Minhyuk’s hair doesn’t help. “Hey, you haven’t moved in five minutes,” Minhyuk responds by continuing to not move. “I am sorry. You woke me up and made my hair all wet, it made me cranky.”

“Go away.”

The hand lifts and the warmth moves away. Minhyuk feels his breath and blood return.

When he opens his eyes and lifts his head, Hyungwon is sitting on the chair, his gaze unfocused and away as he moves a wide-toothed comb through his damp hair, his motion mechanical.

“You want me to comb?” Minhyuk says, feeling bad.

Hyungwon catches his eye and smiles, “In your dreams, sweetcheeks.”

Sober Hyungwon talks like sober Hyungwon moves. Slowly, savory, lazy. It’s mad-den-ing.

“What’s with the pet names? Shut up.”

“Why?”

Minhyuk sits up and does a stabbing gesture. “It’s weird.”

“The nicknames?”

“Everything!”

“What’s everything? The universe?” Hyungwon says, laughter in his voice.

“Stop being annoying.”

“How can I not be with such a face and body? Someone has to balance what God didn’t.”

“You are so shameless.”

“I have my qualities.”

“Stop retorting.”

Hyungwon presses his tongue behind his cheek, Minhyuk fists the sheet.

“That’s so easy.” Hyungwon clears his throat, head raised in an affected manner. “Make.” A slipped laugh. “Me.”

“Last chance, fuck me.”

Hyungwon directs a grin at Minhyuk – a predictable thing from the few hours that Minhyuk has known him. Picking a book from the pile on the table, he ignores Minhyuk completely. “Next weekend.”

***

They push and pull for another twenty minutes, Minhyuk not realizing that he has started to imitate his murder-victim-to-be with his voice trailing off to a drawl as he continues to get sleepy.

When he wakes up, the room is doused in black. Minhyuk rubs his eyes and spots the yellow spot of a reading lamp.

“What time is it?”

It’s so satisfying to see Hyungwon startling and dropping the book. Finally, some signs of humanity that confirm he wasn’t constructed by Minhyuk’s imagination to torture him.

“Fuck, you scared me.”

Minhyuk smiles and he knows it’s bright.

“I can hear your smile,” Hyungwon says, picking up his book again.

The laugh that builds inside Minhyuk spills out like fizz. It surprises even him. He rolls forward as it expands exponentially until he is sure that his organs might have to burst out to make more room for it.

He lurches forwards and pukes on the mattress.

“Jesus. That’s one way to get me to put things in your mouth.”

Minhyuk coughs and laughs and pukes again.

***

“This is weird.”

Hyungwon keeps the flashlight pointed at one side of Minhyuk’s face. “You have nice cheekbones.”

Minhyuk hits his arm with a wet hand. “Stop hitting on me if you don’t want to have sex with me.”

He empties the mouthwash in his mouth again. Even though he has brushed his mouth two times and gargled with the mouthwash three times, the sticky feeling of uncleanliness keeps at him. Honestly, it’s half-puke, and half the place. He is standing in the communal bathroom of the hospital. The flashlight provided by his nemesis doesn’t cut the dark enough to assure him that he isn’t standing in grime and the thing flowing from the tap is water, not blood.

According to Hyungwon, there’s an electricity cut. His dismissive tone is indicative of the normality of it. Minhyuk looks at his reflection in the mirror and wipes his mouth. Something stirs behind him in the mirror and Minhyuk quickly looks away.

He turns around and pushes Hyungwon’s flashlight away. “How do you people live like this?”

Hyungwon turns the flashlight towards his own face. The light coming from below makes him look like a Victorian ghost in his teens.

“Beautifully. We are the people of the earth. We don’t need luxuries of everyday bath and electricity,” Hyungwon hops down from the counter. “Come live with us and you’ll understand.”

Minhyuk hands him his stuff. “So you can’t fuck me, but you can ask me to move in?”

Hyungwon shrugs. “I get 10% commission for every referral.”

Minhyuk shoulders past him. “Disgusting. Have some soul.”

“Your zip is open.”

“Nice try. This jeans’ zip is so fucking on-point that even I can’t get to open it.”

“It’s tight too. Very nicely constructed.”

Minhyuk stops at the door. “Hyungwon, what’s your flashlight pointing to?”

“The foundation of your construction?”

“Hyungwon, what do you consider the foundation of my construction?”

“Butt.”

Minhyuk turns around and pushes his finger into Hyungwon’s chest. “If you reject me, you don’t get to stare at my butt.”

Hyungwon puts the flashlight on his face to show himself nodding with innocent eyes. Quickly, he redirects the flashlight towards Minhyuk’s form. “If my flashlight reaches your crotch, we sleep together.”

Minhyuk steps back and shakes his hair, widening his stance. “Bring it on.”

The flashlight moves slowly – traces a path from his neck, stops at his collarbones, then at his chest. It moves down his waist, and Minhyuk sucks in his breath, anticipating.

The flashlight moves down and then comes back.

Hyungwon tilts his head. “Is that puke stuck on your shirt?”

Minhyuk stills. There are two possibilities here. Either Hyungwon is a sick individual who is lying for a minute of sick pleasure with his sick mind-games or Hyungwon is a sick individual who is truthing for a minute of sick pleasure with his sick mind-games.

“Are you lying?”

“No.”

“Are you saying the truth?”

“No comments.”

The silence around them isn’t quiet. It’s filled with groans and creaks of a thriving community in an abandoned hospital. Hyungwon and Minhyuk stand in that quiet noise facing each other like shooters in a western until Minhyuk takes a blind leap and touches the place where Hyungwon’s flashlight is shining.

“Is it puke?” Hyungwon asks, his curious tone makes Minhyuk want to take a bat to his head, but the puke on his shirt – and now on his fingers – has depleted him of the energy required for the follow-up cleaning and burial.

“None of your business.”

Hyungwon flashes the light on his face, Minhyuk clenches his eyes shut. “Your face looks green.”

“I have natural undertones.”

“Uh-huh. That’s definitely puke. What are you going to do now?”

***

What Minhyuk ends up doing is getting into a stall and pointing the flashlight at the water filling the bucket. Once satisfied with water’s “Are you water?” check, he hands Hyungwon the flashlight. Standing in the next stall, Hyungwon stretches his long arm to point the light at Minhyuk.

“Point it a little lower,” Minhyuk says and starts stripping.

“Yes, dearest.”

“Don’t look.”

“Of course, dearest.”

“If you pull any prank like turning off the flashlight, you are a dead man.”

“I am a 27-year-old man, dearest.”

Minhyuk throws water on himself with force, as if that would be enough for the bacterias to deem his body inhospitable. He scrubs his body with soap, and does his best to will away images of ghosts standing at his back.

Suddenly, there’s Michael Jackson’s _Beat it_ bouncing across the walls and the flashlight starts moving.

Minhyuk bangs the stall’s wall. “Hyungwon, I will fucking kill you.”

“Eh? For what? Having a good time?”

“You scared the shit out of me!”

“Caught you slipping, that’s on you.”

“Ugh, fuck off.”

“Hurtful.”

It’s to Michael Jackson’s _Rock with You_ that Minhyuk towels off with his handkerchief and realizes that his clothes have fallen off from where he had placed them. He picks up the sopping wet clothes from the floor and throws them back.

“Oh my god, oh my god, ugh, fuck this day!”

The flashlight races around. “What’s happening?”

“My clothes are wet.”

“Ooh, dirty,” Hyungwon sing-songs and starts turning the flashlight on and off as _Billie Jean_ comes on. “It’s a rave!”

“Shut up. Do something!”

“I can get my clothes.”

Minhyuk rubs his arms. “Thank you.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Hyungwon says, emphasizing the word ‘pleasure’. “Be right back.”

The flashlight moves away and Minhyuk feels the shadows looming large at his back. “Where are you going?”

Perhaps, it’s the panic in his voice that makes Hyungwon immediately point the flashlight at him. “To get you some clothes.”

“Oh yeah,” Minhyuk says. “Yeah.”

When Minhyuk was 12, he got trapped in his bathroom. It was sudden, unexplainable. He remembers the day clearly. The time was 11 o'clock, the sun was out and summer hot. He remembers clicking his tongue at it when he picked his favorite shirt from the balcony rail. During the bath, the electricity cut off. He didn’t think much of it. There was no ventilation, no light. The dark didn’t scare him, still doesn’t. It’s being naked in the dark that scares him. It didn’t then though.

He was showering and humming. Then suddenly, he was crouching on the bathroom floor, feeling faint. Even in the dark, he could feel even deeper darkness around the edges of his eyes – eyes that felt like empty sockets. Crouching there, he breathed his strength, thinking that he would rest five minutes. When he got up, his bones felt like a shaky house of cards that crumbled and he crouched on the floor again. He doesn’t know how long he laid there, but he remembers thinking that this is the worst way to die: being naked, lonely, and in the dark.

The flashlight catches his eyes.

“Do you want me to stay here?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Just cover yourself with a towel.”

“I am using my handkerchief as a towel.”

“And?”

Minhyuk wraps his arms around himself. “Shut up, Hyungwon.”

“You are being such a damsel in distress right now,” Hyungwon sighs. “Here, hold this.”

“No, you,” Minhyuk retorts half-heartedly, holding the flashlight.

A moment later, Hyungwon’s hand shakes some clothes in front of him. “Get clothed. Quick. I am cold.”

Minhyuk takes the clothes in confusion. “Are these the clothes you were wearing?”

“Yup.”

Minhyuk sniffs them and makes a face. “These smell.”

“Like a man, yes.”

Minhyuk rolls his eyes, putting on Hyungwon's hoodie followed by shorts. “Are you naked then?”

“You wish. I have my underwear.”

***

While going back to the room, Minhyuk walks in front of Hyungwon as instructed. Now that he is dry and clothed, the looming shadows feel smaller. Hyungwon shivering behind him in his underwear also helps.

“Take a right here,” Hyungwon says, voice breaking into a yawn.

“Aw, is this your bedtime, you baby?” Minhyuk sneers.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“That’s such a lame comeback.”

“I am 6 feet. I don’t need to think of things and I still do.”

“Please.”

“Save your ‘please’ for the bed.”

Minhyuk’s plan to stop and try to hit Hyungwon without turning back is foiled abruptly when Hyungwon collides into him, and they stand there pressed into each other.

Neither moves away. There’s no way that Hyungwon isn’t turned on.

“Tell me you don’t want to have sex with me. That you don’t have a hard-on right now.”

“I don’t, but that’s just because I am cold,” Hyungwon says in his ear.

“I’ll warm you up.”

“Turn off the flashlight.”

In the dark, the sensation of being pressed into a wall while Hyungwon cups his face feels heightened. Hyungwon being practically naked and hot also helps.

Minhyuk stands there, hands limp, waiting for Hyungwon to do something, take them to places that aren’t on this plane and when Hyungwon puts his hand on his waist, trailing them down, fitting his face into the crook of Minhyuk’s neck, Minhyuk rises on his toes, taut like a bow, ready to attack.

Hyungwon nips his jaw, his hands stationary on Minhyuk’s hips. “You know you are extremely my type.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But you are complicated, I don’t like complicated.”

“A one-night stand doesn’t require you to solve me,” Minhyuk breathes.

Hyungwon presses into him harder. “One-night stand? I don’t do those. I am a recovering serial monogamist.”

Strung tight, Minhyuk leans forward, pressing his next words on Hyungwon’s lips. “Well, then this should be good for your recovery.”

Hyungwon laughs. “Ask me in a month.”

Minhyuk doesn’t really hear it, doesn’t really understand the weight of it, too focused on Hyungwon’s lips, hands lifting to touch Hyungwon’s naked back, and _oh, he is so warm._

“Okay.” He says, holding Hyungwon impossibly tight. “Now, please, fuck me.”


	2. the one where Minhyuk moves in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to revert it to default font, you can do so by choosing "Hide Creater's style" above. (The button between "comments" and "share")

## Episode 2: the one where Minhyuk moves in

When Minhyuk wakes up, there is a pleasant warm feeling behind him. He turns in Jaehyun’s arms and finds that he’s not in Jaehyun’s arms at all.

“Ugh, it’s _you._ ” 

“Fuck you, too,” Hyungwon rasps and drags himself up so that his chin is tucked over Minhyuk’s head.

Minhyuk throws his leg over him. “I am not even up and I already regret it.”

“Tell that to your morning wood.”

“You tell it, I am sleepy.”

“Morning wood, you regret it,” Hyungwon mumbles, falling back asleep with Minhyuk’s hair in his mouth.

Minhyuk looks at the time and pats Hyungwon’s swollen cheeks. “I have work, so I am leaving. Don’t cry about it.”

When Hyungwon doesn't respond, Minhyuk pinches his cheek. “I am leaving.”

Hyungwon bats his hands away with a whine. “Leave already. Meet me in the evening.”

“Meet you in the evening? For what?”

“For a dinner to thank me for lending you my clothes.”

Minhyuk untangles from his vice grip and sits up. “I can just give your clothes to Yeojoo.”

“Do that then. But remember to staple a good coupon or hard cash.”

“Disgusting.”

Hyungwon opens one eye. “They hate me because I am pretty and good at capitalism.”

“You live in an abandoned hospital.”

“Uh-huh, and where do _you_ live?”

“Shut up. Where is your room? I need some office-going clothes.”

Hyungwon gets under the covers, wiggling back to sleep. “Ask politely and I’ll think about it.”

Minhyuk feints a kick to his head. “Please.”

“Please, who?”

“Hyungwon?”

“No, try again.”

“Chae Hyungwon?”

“No.”

“Mr. Chae Hyungwon?”

“No.”

“I’ll burn your parent’s house.”

“The clothes are in the suitcase.”

“This is your room?”

The form wiggles violently. “Yes. Please stop talking. I am acting out a hangover.” 

“Of course, this is your room. Look at this mess, have some shame!” Minhyuk exclaims, sifting through the clothes spilling out of the suitcase.

“It’s all organized actually.”

Minhyuk stares at the banana he found in the suitcase. “It is?”

“Yes. Everything is where I want it to be. Broaden your mind, tidiness isn’t organization.”

“You narrow your definition, you messy man. I just found a banana and kitchen knife in your suitcase.”

“Yes. As I said, everything is where it’s supposed to be. My organization is next-level and unpretentious. You get what you see with me, baby,” Hyungwon’s face peeks out of the covers, crusty eyes squinting for his phone. “What time is it?”

“7:15.”

“So early. Come to bed.”

“I have work and you don’t have a bed.”

“Ditch it. You are sick.”

Minhyuk compares the two black shirts in his hands and finds out that this man bought two black shirts of the same kind. “I am sick?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a doctor now?”

“Of heart, yes.”

“Fuck off, literally. Where is your paste and soap and stuff?”

“In a kit, in the front pocket of the suitcase.”

“Thanks.” Minhyuk throws the clothes over his shoulder, heading towards the door. “What do you do, by the way?”

“Advertising.”

Minhyuk turns around, surprised. "You are actually employed?”

“I am.”

“LinkedIn or it didn’t happen.”

“So suspicious and talkative in the morning.”

Minhyuk looks around the room theatrically. “There’s no way you are employed.”

Hyungwon throws away his covers, hair spread like a mane. “Can’t even get sleep in my own abandoned hospital room.”

The big windows of the room throw Hyungwon’s form in a soft-light. His godly body proportions humanized by the sour expression on his face.

“Uh, why are you just in your underwear?”

“Why are you not?” Hyungwon gets up and stretches, looking fucking beautiful even though he is squeezing his face like he just ate a lemon.

It doesn’t sit right with Minhyuk at all.

“Wear some clothes.”

“Why? You saw- ah, well, it was dark but you still felt it all.” Hyungwon says with a flirtatious grin before smacking Minhyuk’s head and snatching the kit away from him.

“Oy, what do you think you are doing?”

“Getting some dry shampoo because I didn’t wash my hair yesterday night like I usually do and I need to go to my job?”

Minhyuk bats at him, laughing. “Come on now. You don’t need to lie to me. You have no job.”

Hyungwon presses a kiss to the side of his head, almost bending Minhyuk to the other side with the sheer force of it. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Minhyuk stands there, trying to figure out if Hyungwon is lying or not when Hyungwon calls his name from the door.

“What?”

“Nothing, just thank you for letting me bang that,” Hyungwon cups his hands and shouts, “ass. The sex was glorious,” he finishes with a bow.

Minhyuk gives him a middle finger. “It was barely mediocre.”

***

So, the thing is it wasn’t mediocre. It was, to quote his nemesis, “glorious”. Half part because Minhyuk hasn’t had sex in a while, half-part – and Minhyuk hates to say it – because they had banging chemistry. 

It was all raw and physical, soft and hard, bites and kisses, stroking and plunging, words and moans, and all of it fit in all the right slots at the right times like it seldom does.

Looking out of the window of the lounge, Minhyuk decides that there has to be something fatally wrong with him. If Minhyuk has great sexual chemistry with a man who bid him goodbye today by saying, “One last grope?” then what does it say about him?

What does it especially say about him that he let Hyungwon grope him and copped a feel himself and then they ended up making out and rutting against each other against the window in Hyungwon’s room?

“So, you guys slept together?” Sangah asks.

Minhyuk gives her an unimpressed look. “I thought you were supposed to observe ‘my beautiful sadness’ during this lunch?

“She is a multi-tasker,” Yeojoo says, sipping loudly. “So, did you?”

“What?”

“Sleep together!” Sangah shouts angrily.

Feeling people’s eyes on them, Minhyuk hisses. “Must you air my dirty laundry in public?”

“Speaking of laundry, Hyungwon told me to tell you that he still has your clothes, so if you want them back, you’ll have to come and get them,” Yeojoo says, putting the salt packets in her bag while making eye-contact with the cashier who has been observing her like a hawk since they came in.

Minhyuk scoffs in disbelief. “Is he for real?”

Sangah nods. “Hyungwon is always for real. In college, once he told me that he can’t come to the movies with me because he had something important to do.” Sangah leans forward and whispers. “And the next day, his manager at Target was dead. Dead!” 

Minhyuk hears the sentence and immediately deletes it from his reality. “Okay, ignoring that. What’s up with him. Like, does he have a job?”

“Ah-ha! So, you did sleep together!” Sangah shouts.

Minhyuk covers his face, feeling hot. “Stop shouting. Yeah, yeah, we slept together.”

The sound of hi-five makes Minhyuk uncover his eyes and stare at them in disbelief. “Why are you so invested in this?”

Yeojoo shrugs. “We cancelled Netflix to save up for the wedding.”

“You are the worst?”

“Don’t be like that.” Sangah says while Yeojoo smirks at the cashier and drops the cutlery in her bag. “Ask us anything about him. I have known him since I was born.”

“Oh. Childhood friends?”

“No, read his birth chart. ‘Realistically’,” Here, Sangah air-quotes, “I’ve known him since college. Yeojoo is his childhood best-friend though.”

“I despise that accusation.”

Minhyuk turns to Yeojoo. “Does he actually have a job? Is it a scam?”

Yeojoo lifts her bag and rattles it while smiling at the cashier. “Yeah, he is in advertising. Got hired right out of college on a hefty package. Been working for the same company since then.”

Minhyuk scrunches his nose. “That doesn’t sound right. They let him grow his hair that long?”

Yeojoo looks at him in amusement. “It’s not school.”

“Still. Whatever. So, what does he actually do?”

“He sort of mediates between the agency and the clients.”

“So, like an advertising account manager?”

Sangah bangs her hands on the table. “Yes! Those are the word that he uses. You guys are such soulmates!”

“They are not.”

“It’s a high-paying job. Maybe we are soulmates,” Minhyuk says, laughing.

Yeojoo rolls her eyes. “He is a miserable miser. If you are expecting money from him, forget it.”

“Lies. If he is a miser, then explain to me why the clothes that I am wearing – which are his – are all branded?”

“Because he is an idiot,” Yeojoo says, her face closing.

Before Minhyuk can pry, Sangah taps him with a pen. Shaking her notepad at him, she says, “So tell me how sad you are. Be descriptive. Cry, if possible.”

***

When Minhyuk knocks on the door, a feeling that he is forgetting something important nags at him. He tries to think of it and it’s not until Hoseok opens the door wearing fancy clothes that he realizes-

“Oh shit, it’s your anniversary.”

Hoseok immediately shakes his head. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” 

This is such a mess. Hoseok and Hyunwoo have been so nice to him. They let him sprout on their couch, got his stuff from Jaehyun’s place, fed him good food and good lies for an optimistic future and how is Minhyuk paying them back? By forcing them to have silent sex during their anniversary? Isn’t he becoming the kind of monster he despises?

“Minhyuk, don’t worry about it!”

It’s Hoseok’s worried face that does it. 

“Uh, no. I am just annoyed that I didn’t come early. I am here to get my stuff, dude. Found a place yesterday,” Minhyuk lies through his teeth.

“You did?”

“Yeah! Totally. My colleague’s building has some empty rooms. Checked it out yesterday, the place is cool.” Minhyuk found a dead cockroach in the bathroom stall this morning. “I was going to text you about it but like, I forgot. You know me, complete airhead.”

Hoseok places a gentle hand on his arm and rubs it in comfort. “We like having you here. There is no hurry, you know. Consider this your own place.”

Minhyuk is never going to consider anything his place until he has his name on it in a legally proven way.

It must convey on his face because Hoseok hugs him. “Do whatever helps you. We are always here for you.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Minhyuk looks at the couch and stops himself from crying. “I’ll miss you guys.”

“How far is your new place?”

Minhyuk hugs him tighter. “20 minutes from bus, and 10 by car.”

***

The agent asks him to fill a form. Yeojoo fills it for him and hands it to the agent. The agent asks him why he wants to be a guardian and Minhyuk starts with this bullshit answer how preservation of old buildings is important and then starts laughing half-way. The agent asks him if he has the deposit and rent money. Minhyuk says yes, still laughing, and hands it over. The agent check marks all the points on his sheet and officially proclaims Minhyuk a tenant. 

***

The first thing that Minhyuk notices about his room is that it’s three rooms away from Hyungwon’s. Second, it doesn’t have a door. Third, the room has a private bathroom but no water which verifies that Hyungwon was saying the truth last night. The fourth thing that Minhyuk notices is that his life is in complete shambles because when he opens his phone to order a mattress, he notices a message from Jaehyun which says: Are you okay?

_Are you okay?_

Is the moon okay with the realization that it’s completely dependent on the sun?

Huh?

_Stupid idiot._

Minhyuk opens his contact to block him when he remembers that he had already done that. Then, why is he seeing this stupid question which is obviously constructed to make him not okay?

Panicked, he goes into the chat and finds the drunk messages that he sent Jaehyun. The four messages all follow some variation of keyboard smash. Minhyuk’s sigh of relief is cut shortly when a writing bubble pops up in the chat. He puts his phone down and waits for a notification but it doesn’t come. He peeks at the screen with one eye.

He doesn’t have a signal. Oh, fucking great.

Tortured by curiosity, Minhyuk starts wandering through the corridors, arm stretched to get even one bar when he a person blocks his way.

When he looks up, he finds Hyungwon dressed in a black vest, shirt and slacks, his hair tied in a ponytail.

Minhyuk snickers. “You look like a douche.”

Hyungwon makes a face. “Yes, douching. So you have _theoretically_ heard of it.”

Minhyuk stands there with his mouth open, unexplainably offended. “Fuck you?”

Hyungwon immediately lifts his palms. “Sorry, just an instinctive comeback. I have no complaints about your services. If I had, I wouldn’t have lodged my tongue in there and rated it 5 stars.”

Minhyuk pushes him slightly and Hyungwon dramatically falls against the wall.

“The audacity- I didn’t hear any complaints yesterday when you were going all,” Minhyuk parts his mouth and bends his knees, hands lifted, he does a humping motion, “baby, you are so fucking beautiful. So fucking good to me. So tiny and tight. _OH, OH, OHH_.”

Hyungwon waves at someone behind Minhyuk. “Ay, Jooheon. How was last night? As you can see mine was great.”

Minhyuk scoffs, still humping the air. “Nice tr-“

“Uh, I am just passing, I didn’t see or hear anything.”

Jooheon powerwalks through the corridor, head-hanging. When he passes Minhyuk, he nods without looking at him, his face red. “See you in the office, sir.”

Minhyuk closes his eyes, knees still bent. “Yeah. Missed you in the office today, hope you are feeling better.”

Jooheon fortunately just nods and continues walking away.

When Minhyuk looks back at Hyungwon, he finds him laughing silently, muffling his laughter in his palms. His shoulders shaking violently. Upon meeting eyes with Minhyuk, he starts laughing loudly. Pointing at Minhyuk like a prepubescent bully.

His laughter is so contagious that Minhyuk grabs him by his shoulders and instead of shaking the laughter out of him, starts laughing himself.

“You should have seen Jooheon’s face.”

“Stop laughing,” Minhyuk says, laughing even louder.

***

Sitting on Hyungwon’s mattress, Minhyuk stares at Hyungwon while he changes out of his clothes.

It’s not for a horny reason. It’s more for an _existential_ reason. He is trying to figure out what’s the cause of their sexual chemistry. It has to be something anatomical, because personality-wise-

“You really do look like my favorite porn star, you know? I wasn’t kidding. I meant it from the bottom of my heart,” Hyungwon says, almost losing his balance while trying to get his sweatpants on.

“Flattered.”

Like a generous host of a tavern for children, Hyungwon pours some coke in plastic cups with a flower pattern on them and places them on a matching tray.

Minhyuk gets this bizarre feeling that this is a make-believe tea party and he is Hyungwon’s teddy bear.

“Can you sit on my lap, pumpkin? I have back problems.”

“There is a chair right there.”

They sip on their coke silently, Hyungwon looking at him like a curious feline sussing out if eating its dead master can be proven ethically okay if called upon in court. 

Minhyuk is about to tell him to cut it out when his phone rings.

“Excuse me.” Predictably, Hyungwon takes out the device they recommend in douche 101 – a Bluetooth headset – and does the gesture, again, recommended in douche 101 – a raised finger directed at Minhyuk. Very politely, he goes, “Hey, thanks for getting back to me on such short notice.”

_Ugh._

“Yeah, Jihyeon told me that. I understand your reservations. I have grandparents too, so I completely understand.

Yes, yes. Exactly! But, see we ran A/B testing through different test-groups with the intended demographic, and that’s the creative they engaged with the most.”

Feeling bored, Minhyuk picks up Hyungwon’s drink and spits in it while making sure Hyungwon is watching him.

Hyungwon looks at him in disbelief and starts laughing.

“Oh no, no. That’s not- I personally chose the team for you.” Hyungwon scampers towards his backpack and takes out a notebook, quickly turning the pages. “From the researchers to actual designers, everyone is someone I personally know and consider the best. Your project is my biggest priority.” He puts the notebook in front of him, adjusting his glasses. “By the way – I totally forgot to ask you in the morning – how did Siwoon’s basketball match go?

Yeah?

Of course, I remember! You are family. Siwoon has practically grown in front of my eyes. Of course..” Hyungwon smiles, his eyes shining with the evil that only advertisers can exude.

For Minhyuk, watching Hyungwon work feels like a man with a cucking kink watching Satan bounce his wife on his massive protein-gains-beer-bottle cock.

Defying every logic, when Hyungwon smiles his “Got you, sucker” smiles at his client, Minhyuk feels them all clumping together in a phallic shape, opening his mouth roughly, and skull-fucking his thoughts out of him until he is just a stupid clump of electrified nerves meant only to be used by the worst kind of cold capitalists at the top of their game.

Hyungwon rolls back his sleeves and runs a hand through his hair. Smiling, he crouches forward to drag his laptop towards him. 

Minhyuk gets up and leaves. 

***

It’s tougher to sleep on the floor than they make it out to be. It’s especially tough when your phone is dead and there is an electricity cut, and you only have a candle, some dreaded observations, and an acute awareness of the absence of your door as your company.

It’s not that Minhyuk hasn’t had felt intense desire before, of course he has. It’s not that at all. It’s this realisation that all this while, when he was trying to revive a dead romance, thinking that he had to do it, had to suffer because that was the only option, that he wouldn’t feel anything for anyone who isn’t Jaehyun, he was so clearly lying to himself. 

If he can feel such sexual attraction to a bin-fucker, then he can feel sexual attraction _and_ romantic attraction to other people too. So, what was the point of it? What was the point of dragging himself alone through a dark tunnel, thinking the only light was at the end of it?

All this while, he could have exited any time. Jaehyun and his suffering was pointless. Just a by-product of inertia and fear of change. Is that it? So, at the end there never was love? Not even a little bit? Was it just Minhyuk and his stupid tendency to cling to his versions of people, who he puts on a pedestal and worships, anticipating fulfilment of a wish that he doesn’t know?

It’s such a small thing, and yet Minhyuk feels like he has suddenly met God on an ice-cream stall and been told that the reality is actually just a balloon, and before Minhyuk can comprehend _all of it_ , god went right ahead and popped it.

Because, if Minhyuk can feel attraction to anyone – if six years of sharing your life so intimately mean nothing in the bigger picture – then, Jaehyun and he truly has no chance, do they? They aren’t “meant to be”. This isn’t some little break and the universe isn’t gathering forces to get them back together. There are other people for Minhyuk which means there are also other people for Jaehyun which means-

All of his suffering is nothing special. It’s cold, it’s ordinary. It’s just a…break-up.

Minhyuk blows the candle out and decides to ignore everything for today.

***

“You didn’t leave?” Hyungwon asks him, flashing his phone’s torch on Minhyuk’s face. He opens the door further, a suspicious look on his face.

“No, I stayed so I could steal stuff from your room.”

“Ah-ha! Fell in love with my organic shampoo, didn’t you? Knew it. I can get you a bottle for a discount-”

“Actually, I live here now. Right down the hall. Room no. 103.”

“Oh? Oh shit, why didn’t you tell me? Did you let Yeojoo have the 10% referral? Man, shit.”

Minhyuk raises his candle. “I am sad, Hyungwon.”

Hyungwon opens his mouth, then closes it. Scratching the back of his neck, he looks away, “Um.”

“It’s night and I don’t know what to do.”

Hyungwon continues looking around, eyes darting frantically as if now would the right time for a ghost to come out and save him. When no rescue comes, he awkwardly puts a hand on Minhyuk’s shoulder. “Do you wanna talk about it?” He says, looking like he would faint if Minhyuk actually started talking about it.

Minhyuk shakes his head.

“Okay. Um. Would giving me a blowjob help?”

He says it while keeping a comically straight face. It’s clearly a joke.

Minhyuk pushes in and closes the door behind him. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Minhyuk puts the candle away and gets on his knees on the edge of the mattress. “Yeah. Can you kiss me first thing in the morning? I want to check something.”

The silence that ensues isn’t static, it swirls around them loaded with Hyungwon’s confusions and questions.

Questions that never come as Hyungwon turns off the flashlight and the next thing that Minhyuk feels is Hyungwon’s hands in his hair. “Okay.”

“Go hard, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I have a gag-reflex but I like choking, so don’t pussy out on me. I’ll start, then you move my head as you want. If I am dying, I would pinch your thigh. Don’t go all, ‘are you okay?’ on me. I hate that.”

The hands lift his face up, pressing it against Hyungwon’s crotch. “You have a face of a prince and mouth of a sailor. I hope the crudeness isn’t just reserved for the theory of a blowjob, but also applies to the application of it.”

“Just remember to kiss me when I wake up, okay?”

“I will.”

***

Hyungwon doesn’t.

Instead, Minhyuk wakes up lonely and cranky. The weather outside is cloudy and inside, Minhyuk gathers Hyungwon’s cover, punching, before throwing it away.

He asked for one thing. To check if Minhyuk would feel the same sense of fluttering butterflies as when Jaehyun kissed him even when they weren’t having sex, and the bin-man didn’t even fulfil that. _One wish!_

Is that any way to treat someone who gave you the blowjob of your life? 

Feeling petulant, Minhyuk topples the mountain of books on the table and storms out.

In the hall, he meets Sangah who tells him that she was just coming to get him, everyone is in the hall, and it’s Hyungwon’s turn to make bread and butter for them, so Minhyuk redirects the path of the storm, and goes to the hall instead.

There, he finds a bathed, business-clothed, and french-braided Hyungwon sitting on the table – laughing and eating like a soap-actor unaware that the producers don’t like him, so he is going to get hit by a bus and die in the next scene.

“Oh hey, pumpkin. Come, I made the breakfast of the soldiers. Bread and butter with orange juice, freshly squeezed out of some orange tits.”

Yeojoo hits his head. “Don’t be gross.”

Sangah sits on Yeojoo’s lap and starts speaking like she is continuing a previous conversation. “No, babe. You are wrong. Politics needs to focus on achieving the common goals of humanity rather than power. If we all are moving towards the same goals, politics doesn’t need the power to manhandle people into doing its bidding.”

Yeojoo feeds her a grape. “Without power, nothing can be achieved.”

Hyungwon drags the bowl of grapes towards himself, laughing when Sangah and Yeojoo glare at him.

Minhyuk crosses his arms, manifesting a rickety chandelier above Hyungwon.

“I think our condition is so twisted because everything has become about power,” Hyungwon says, popping a grape in his mouth, winking at Minhyuk. 

Minhyuk doesn’t care for politics at all but what he does care about is showing Hyungwon to be the vile liar he is.

“That is a naïve way of thinking. We wouldn’t have a civilization if we didn’t have the law. And the law couldn’t be applied if someone wasn’t given power over other people. Nothing would have been possible if one section of people didn’t have power over the other section of people,” Minhyuk says.

Everyone looks up at him in surprise, especially Hyungwon, his brows raised in a patronizing gesture. It turns the red heat behind Minhyuk’s eyes into hot blue fire.

“Not just a pretty face, are you?”

Minhyuk grits his teeth.

“Well, pumpkin. I think you’ve been brainwashed by people in power. If all of us had been put on the same level, with the same level of education, money, and power, we would have the same goals which is the development of humanity. Your theory is what keeps the bourgeoisie in chains. ” He redirects his gaze at Yeojoo and Sangah, almost like what he is saying would be too big for Minhyuk’s tiny brain to comprehend. “You know, our problems started when we shifted from a communal way of living to-”

“What if,” Minhyuk picks up the jug of water from the table, “I pour this on your head. What are you going to do?”

“Tell you to not do that?” Hyungwon says with an incredulous expression.

“What if I continue doing it?” 

Hyungwon tilts his head. “You look angry. I am sorry, did I do something?”

Minhyuk hates empty sorrys, they are nothing but an easy cop-out done by cowards.

“Answer the question. What if every morning, after you get ready for your office, I keep throwing water on you even when you tell me no?” 

Hyungwon sighs. “I will explain it to you that it’s wasting my time and affecting my day.”

Minhyuk shakes the jug in his hand. “What if I still don’t stop?”

Hyungwon looks at the other people on the table and frowns.

Minhyuk laughs. “You people discussing theoretical politics on the breakfast table know nothing. You have no idea. All of you think that you currently living like this for a little time somehow makes you know what suffering is. None of you know what poverty or discrimination actually is. All this constant talk about politics is compensation for your privilege.”

“You don’t know anything about us.” Hyungwon’s tone is as blank as his face. “If anything, it sounds like you projecting your insecurities on us.”

Minhyuk can feel the jug in his hands shaking as he moves closer to Hyungwon who ignores him and starts pouring some juice in those stupid plastic glasses of his.

“Maybe. But you still didn’t answer the question. If I poured this on you, you’ll get angry and threaten me. That’s you using power, you just hate to admit that your Twitter political theories mean shit all in actual life.”

Hyungwon gets up. “What’s your problem? Just because I slept with you, it doesn’t mean that you can get away with talking to me like this. I don’t know how you were raised but there is a polite way of getting your points across and-”

Minhyuk throws the jug of water on Hyungwon’s face, spinning on his feet, he heads back.

***

It takes 5 minutes of sitting in his room, resisting the urge to bite his nails while waiting for Hyungwon or anyone to come there and tell him what a rude fuck-up he is to realize that he fucked up massively. 

It takes one more minute of seeing Hyungwon barging in and dragging him up by his collar to really realize how angry he has made Hyungwon, to feel the kind of fear that rests in extremities and flows to the center.

“What the fuck was that?”

“I am sorry.”

Hyungwon pushes him against the wall, drops of water coming down from his hair, his shirt wet. “You think that you can act this rude and get away with it?”

“I am sorry, I was angry at you and you were being so condescending-“

“Angry about what?”

When Minhyuk doesn’t respond because now that he has come out of that haze, the reason for all this drama seems incredibly stupid and he would rather be punched than being made to admit it.

Hyungwon shakes him. “Angry about what?”

Minhyuk looks down and pouts. “I asked you to kiss me first thing in the morning, you didn’t.”

Hyungwon’s grip on his collar loosens and tightens again. “Are you serious right now?”

“You don’t have to sound so-“

“I did fucking kiss you first thing in the fucking morning.” 

Minhyuk looks up. “What?”

“I woke up at 4 am for a two-hour meeting, and then I had to make breakfast, so I decided to wake you up then and kiss you, which I did. You kissed me back, so I thought you were awake but clearly not.”

“Oh. I am sorry, I genuinely don’t remember.”

Hyungwon pulls him and kisses him, pressing, prodding, rough and angry, and Minhyuk feels it all. Feels Hyungwon’s anger and strength, feels the butterflies in his chest.

Hyungwon pushes him away. “Stay the fuck away from me from now on.” 

Minhyuk sees him walking away and decides that he disagrees. He grabs Hyungwon by the cuff of his shirt and traps his face in his hands when he turns back surprised. “I am so fucking turned on right now.”

Hyungwon stares at him for a moment before scoffing. “You are unreal.”

Hyungwon puts a hand on the button of Hyungwon’s jeans. “Come on. Hate sex is the best.”

“I don’t hate you. I am just fucking angry at your impoliteness.”

Minhyuk leans closer, bites his ear. “Fuck your anger in me then. I should be taught the consequences of being rude, shouldn’t I? Come on, you are so hot right now.”

Hyungwon takes a deep breath, presses his fingers on the side of Minhyuk’s neck, and then drags him out. “My room.”


	3. the one where Minhyuk goes on a field trip

## Epsiode 3: the one where Minhyuk goes on a field trip

Minhyuk puts the last book in place. “Is this right?”

“No.”

When Hyungwon had said, “My room” all intense, Minhyuk like other normal people had assumed that he was going to get absolutely railed. Which he did. It was great. Minhyuk could cry, and he did.

What was not assumed was Hyungwon ignoring Minhyuk completely afterward. His priority being drying his hair before settling on the mattress with his laptop, telling Minhyuk to “arrange my books as they were before you had a bitch fit” all business-like. 

Now, here is Minhyuk – tiny and very sorry, looking at the clock and arranging the books for the seventh time.

“You are not even looking!”

Hyungwon looks up from his laptop, fingers still moving. Minhyuk is sure that he is writing gibberish to look cool. 

“No. Satisfied?”

“Hyungwoooooooonnnn!” Minhyuk whines, stomping towards him. “I am getting late.”

“Should have thought that when you toppled my books. If you want my forgiveness, you must put it in the sequence it was before.”

Plopping down across Hyungwon, Minhyuk slaps the mattress, hunched like a witchy crone who lost her last frog eye. “Why do I need to do this? I said sorry and I am adorable. Isn’t that enough?”

“No.”

“Look at me.”

“No.”

Minhyuk crouches forward and tucks his chin over the laptop’s lid. “Look at me.”

Hyungwon sighs but stops typing. “I am looking.”

Minhyuk blinks.

Hyungwon tilts his head. “What am I looking at, pumpkin?”

Minhyuk pouts. “Me! Look, I have an uneven blink.”

Hyungwon grabs his chin. Dragging Minhyuk’s face closer, he squints. “You do have an uneven blink. Huh, I never noticed before.”

Minhyuk nods eagerly. “Aren’t I _just_ adorable?”

Hyungwon smiles and pushes him aside by his neck. “Adorable like a rabid puppy maybe. Go back to the book stack and try again.”

“You are working from home anyway,” Minhyuk mutters, going back to the stack and trying once again.

“Yes, because you ruined my mood.”

“And I atoned for my sins the right way!”

“Uh-huh. No banter for you until you arrange the books like they were before.”

“I need to get ready for my office, Hyungwon.”

“Do you think that I care?”

From the corner of his eye, Minhyuk observes Hyungwon. Sure, that he is not being observed back, Minhyuk pouts and topples the stack of books again.

“I can see you, Minhyuk.”

“Heh.”

Hyungwon shakes his head, smiling. “I can see why you are so bratty. Clearly, people have been letting you get away with shit just because you act adorable later.”

Minhyuk rises on his toes, hands folded and below his chin. “Is it working?”

Hyungwon looks at him sternly before slumping. “This is the first and last time that you are getting away with this. I do not ask for much but you act rude to me again, and we are done.”

Minhyuk holds his ears and does a sit-up. “Deal.”

Hyungwon smiles, gaze going back to his laptop. “Cute.”

Minhyuk shrugs, acting cuter. “You are so kind. Can I keep my stuff here until I get a door?”

Hyungwon rolls his eyes. “Minhyuk, this is very bad for my recovery.”

“What?”

“Whatever. Fine.”

Minhyuk jumps towards Hyungwon and squishes his face, exaggeratedly squealing before smacking a kiss on his nose. “Sucker.”

***

“And then Hyungwon goes, ‘You are hoarding all the covers, so I say fine, I’ll sleep upside down, then the next morning, he goes, you kicked my face in your sleep. I have been living in his room for a week, and it’s like you can never make that man happy, you know? What a pain!”

Hyunwoo smiles at him like a dad smiling at his 3-year-old daughter’s stories. “You should invite him here someday.”

Minhyuk wipes his mouth, spoon scraping the last bit of sauce. “For what?”

Hoseok pushes a glass of water towards him. “He thinks that you are dating him.”

Minhyuk chokes, feeling the sauce in his nose and ears. “That- that chump?”

Hoseok starts thumping his back. “You talk a lot about him is all.”

Minhyuk gets up, smacking Hoseok’s hand away. “Jeez. I am not dying, stop with the thumping.” Busying himself with collecting everyone’s plate, Minhyuk ignores the hot feeling in his ears. “I talk about him a lot because he is so stupid. When I told him that I would spend the night here, he got all grumpy. ‘But, sweetcheeks, I bought cheese tacos,’ he says. I tell him that I am lactose intolerant, so he goes, ‘Okay? Just tolerate it then?’ What an idiot.”

Hoseok gives him a patient smile, taking back their plates. “We are still eating, _sweetcheeks_.”

Feeling the heat spread to his chest, Minhyuk clears his throat. “You guys eat slow.”

Hyunwoo takes out a chocolate bar from his pocket and hands it to Minhyuk. “Eat more.”

“See, Hoseok. Learn from him.”

“Jaehyun texted me.”

Minhyuk swallows down the bite of chocolate. “Damn it, Hyunwoo!”

“I am sorry. But,” Hyunwoo takes out his phone, “between the texts and him asking me every day in the office, it’s hard to ignore. He isn’t asking for much, you know.”

“Yeah. It’s me who always asks for too much,” Minhyuk mutters, hearing his teeth clack through the chocolate.

“That’s not what he is saying, Minhyuk,” Hoseok says.

“Fine. What does he want now?”

“You left your passport there, idiot,” Hoseok says, picking a chicken leg from Hyunwoo’s plate and blinking innocently when Hyunwoo looks at him.

“You order a salad for takeout and then eat Hyunwoo’s chicken and he lets you, you think you know my suffering?”

“He orders extra for me.”

“I order extra for Hoseok.”

Minhyuk slumps down, head against the table. “Fuck off with your cuteness.”

“Minhyuk, I am sorry, but you need to get the rest of the stuff. Jaehyun is too polite to throw it away even if you tell him.”

Minhyuk curls into himself further, staring at the drop of tear on his jeans. “Can you get it for me?”

“He wants to meet you,” Hyunwoo says, talking softly like Minhyuk is a feral cub. 

“For what?”

“To talk.” 

“Jesus. We have talked our relationship to death. What does he want now?”

The pause in conversation is dense, another drop of tear falls down on Minhyuk’s jeans and he hopes that his voice isn’t giving away the sudden emotional pain that has taken hold of him. Unseen, it’s easy to touch the tinge of pain inside him and feel it for the ocean it is. It’s easy to imagine his friends giving each other looks over his head to decide who is going to tell him what Minhyuk already knows.

Hoseok sits beside him and puts a hand on his back. “Minhyuk, the ring you have. It’s a family heirloom, he needs it back.”

***

In Hyunwoo and Hoseok’s bathroom, Minhyuk takes out the ring from his wallet and stares at it. Wondering if it always shone so bright and looked so sharp. He puts it inside his palm and closes it before putting it against his forehead.

A ring is nothing. It’s just a symbol of your relationship, of the love that you hold for each other. And, perhaps, that’s why it hurts. Minhyuk knew that the day was coming when he will get a physical confirmation of the end, the day he’ll have to actually acknowledge that it’s time for a new beginning that he was hoping to delay till his 90s.

It’s not even the pain of it. Pain and Minhyuk are old friends who fuck on a daily basis. Minhyuk has never been scared of pain, if anything he has always invited it; asked for it to change him, make him its own so that when the happiness comes, he can wrap himself in it instead of watching it pass. He has never been a coward but a 6-year-relationship makes you too soft. The separation leaves you scraped raw. A happy bird twittering outside can make his eyes wet some days. There have been so many instances of him pausing while doing everyday things and feeling the ice sheet of normality cracking beneath his feet, plunging him into ice-cold water and he feels himself sinking and sinking, never reaching the bottom of it. He is present for all these painful sensations, there is no detachment. He is highly aware every time normalcy cracks so he knows that there is no length to his hurt. There is no end, and there is no beginning. It’s shallow enough for him to give hope that he can wade through it, but it’s also deep enough to take him unaware and plunge him, get in his lungs, bloat his insides and make him suffer endlessly.

With or without the ring, this pain is always with him, so what does it matter?

It’s not easy to put 6 years on one page of your diary and decide to move on so easily even when the last lines are messy and blotted until finally, the ink ran dry. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to be reminded that he can’t indulge in that one page forever.

It’s not easy to lose the ring to its owner and accept that this is the end.

It’s not easy to accept that Minhyuk will have to dig into another person, show his corners and nooks again, help them explore him while walking on eggshells to explore them himself, trust their words, trust the intention behind their gestures, shape them and be shaped by them. It’s so hard to fall in love and be vulnerable and trust that every day from now on that they wake up they would be in love and the vulnerability and nakedness of soul won’t be for naught. It’s so hard.

But Minhyuk has to do it, has to return the ring, has to start again.

All of this is so hard and now that he knows no love lasts, he knows that he’ll have to go through this again and again, accumulate it in layers, harden himself, soften himself, until…what?

Love?

Death?

What?

_What?_

***

Hyungwon hits his feet with his shoes. “Go to your room.”

“Hmm?”

Turning around on the mattress, Minhyuk rubs the sleep out of his eyes and itches his stomach. He had plans of spending the night at Hoseok and Hyunwoo’s place but he talked himself into such spiral sadness that just the thought of sleeping on that couch again was enough for him to run out of the door before barging into Hyungwon’s room only to find it empty.

“You are back.”

Standing over his head, Hyungwon opens the button on his sleeves. “Your room. Go to your room.”

“Why are you dressed in office clothes on Saturday at-” Minhyuk looks at the windows and finds the outside pitch-black. When he fell asleep it was around 11:30 PM.

“Minhyuk, your room,” Hyungwon says, unbuttoning his shirt.

Minhyuk turns on his stomach. “My room doesn’t have a door or mattress.”

“I don’t care. Go to Yeojoo or Sangah’s room.”

“What? Why.” Minhyuk mumbles into the mattress, mouth open. The sleep clings to the bottom of his eyes, closing them imperceptibly.

Hyungwon turns his form and lifts him from the mattress. The sleep recedes to the pit of Minhyuk’s stomach. “What the fuck? Hyungwon? Hyungwon!”

Hyungwon doesn’t say anything, not even a wince when Minhyuk claws into his upper arm.

“Don’t do that. I’ll drop you.” There is a weird quality to his voice.

In the week that they have spent together, Minhyuk has heard Hyungwon in all kinds of voices. His morning rasp, his evening lilt, his nightly deep whispers, and his early morning snores. He knows them all. He can identify his indulgence or annoyance just from the corners of his lips, but this Hyungwon feels foreign. He isn’t angry, Minhyuk would have been able to tell that from the thrill that starts from his lower abdomen and reaches to his toes when he witnesses Hyungwon’s anger. This is something else, something that leaves Minhyuk feeling utterly cold.

Hyungwon plants him in his room and says, “You know Yeojoo and Sangah’s room?”

When Minhyuk doesn’t respond, half-petulant and half-scared, Hyungwon pulls his hand and takes out a pen from his pocket. He writes the room number on Minhyuk’s hand and then leaves unceremoniously. No goodbye, no flirting, no pulling his pigtails. It’s so unlike him that Minhyuk can only think about him when he knocks on Yeojoo and Sangah’s door, and asks them if he could sleep there.

Beside their mattress, they place a sleeping bag for him. He wants to tell them about Hyungwon but he isn’t sure what he should say.

_He kicked me out of his room which I was forcefully occupying for a week because we are really good at sex and he is very warm and he lets me have the covers and traps me against him because he says that I move too much but I think he just likes snuggling and is too much of a coward to say it?_

Minhyuk gets up once and mumbles something about water at Yeojoo and Sangah’s forms. It feels habitual to walk to Hyungwon’s room and knock. When no answer comes, Minhyuk retreats his steps and tucks himself in his sleeping bag, alone and cold.

***

The colors in the sky are dull, fizzy. The time is 5:15 AM. Minhyuk gets up and finds Sangah and Yeojoo sprawled on each other like two balled-dancing lesbian ostriches. The image makes perfect sense in Minhyuk’s sleepy brain. He goes into the communal bathroom, nods at the person pissing beside him, the person stares at him. Without his lenses, his eyes hurt, so he closes them. He washes his hands with his eyes closed, and he gets lifted by Hyungwon onto the counter with his eyes closed. He gets kissed by Hyungwon with his eyes closed. Hyungwon says something against his cheeks, and Minhyuk doesn’t understand it. Minhyuk gives a questioning hum but Hyungwon just smiles at him in a weird way. He carries him to his room. He places Minhyuk on his mattress and lies down beside him, Minhyuk tries to turn but Hyungwon keeps him there, tightly pressed against his chest. Stubborn, Minhyuk manages to turn anyway, lowering himself, he places his lips against Hyungwon’s adam’s apple. He murmurs a goodnight and falls asleep.

He wakes up alone with fleeting images of warmth enveloping him whole and light kisses against his hair, not sure if the whole thing actually happened or it was just a dream and he sleepwalked there.

***

If you had told Minhyuk that he would be sitting shirtless on a chair with his nipples covered in red paint while he gets painted like one of Leo’s French girls by a gay woman, he would have told you that you have weird kinks.

But here he is, sitting on a chair, with his nipples painted red, getting painted like one of Leo’s French girls by a gay woman.

“You have a _magnificent_ chest. You should show it off more,” Sangah says, staring at him with one eye, her brush moving in a long, bizarre gesture on the canvas. Behind her, Yeojoo glares at Minhyuk and his magnificent chest.

“Yeah? Should I start moving around shirtless like Hyungwon?”

Sangah stops, brush hanging in the air. “Hyungwon shirtless? What are you talking about? The sun rises from the west the day we get to see his naked arms.”

Minhyuk shifts for comfort and gets met by twin glares.

“It does? The man stays sans shirt with me all the time.”

“Oh. He must feel comfortable with you,” Sangah says with a sweet smile.

“They are banging all the time. That’s what,” Yeojoo says, getting up to fetch a brush when Sangah puts a hand out.

“No, we are not,” Minhyuk says, defensively. “We are working people, we just meet at night, go at it for 2 hours, and call it a day.”

“2 hours? That’s lesbian sex, love,” Sangah says, and looks behind to see if Yeojoo is laughing. Yeojoo looks up from the collection of brushes to show herself snickering. Sangah turns back around and shakes her shoulders happily. Out of Sangah’s sight, Yeojoo goes back to being stoic instantly.

This is absolutely in character for Yeojoo, so Minhyyuk feels only a little flabbergasted and red-nippled. 

“What do you do the other times?” Sangah asks, taking the brush from Yeojoo’s hands and acting shy when Yeojoo touches her hand a little too long.

“I don’t know. Lots of things.”

“Like?”

“Sex.”

“That’s very things indeed,” Yeojoo says dryly.

“We also watch movies and play games. We got this game called Snowbros and if I wasn’t playing with him, he would eat dust. He says that I get too aggro while playing but it’s okay because it makes the follow-up sex sexier.”

“What else? Tell me everything!” Sangah says, smiling at Minhyuk so purely, so innocently that Minhyuk feels it easily spilling out of him.

“I don’t know, just normal things. He works a lot, so usually, I play games on my phone and annoy him and he, like, puts me in his lap like I am a cat or something and goes back to work again and then he is the cat because I can’t move while he is working, so I have to, like, wiggle out or something. He is so clingy, you know? He acts all ‘Ho-Ho-ho I am an independent man who needs no one’ and then he would be working during these insane hours and selling bullshit on phones and he’ll take these big sighs and then look at me and go back to his work and his face would become slightly pouty, just on the edge of sulky. It makes me feel for him, so I have to put my earphones in and slide behind him so that I can hug him and keep him comfy. Sometimes I fall asleep like that and when I wake up, we are sleeping and he has manhandled me into being the little spoon and I always tell him that I want to be the big spoon sometimes and he says for that I need to sleep later than him, and usually, I can’t sleep but he is so warm and fluffy when he is not speaking that I just end up falling asleep before him. The nights he isn’t working, we watch movies and he glares at me when I say something in between and I tell him to pick movies that he has already seen but he never listens!” Minhyuk stretches his neck, rubbing it while looking at the floor, seeing all the images behind his eyes. “He is so weird. He will curl up with a book and some days, I don’t even see him blinking and then other days, he’ll read a para and then drag me towards him, and squish my face like a stress ball and I tell him to give the book up, he is clearly not in the reading mood, but again, he never listens. Get this, one day, I was reading a book on calligraphy and I was really into it, and he just drags me towards him by my foot. By my foot! Like I am a toy or something. Then he goes, ‘let me be inside you, baby,’ all cheesy and shit and I tell him no because I was really into this book, so then he starts stroking my thighs, and now shit, I am turned on, so I try to find my bookmark, and he isn’t patient at all during these times, so he tells me ‘just dog-ear the page’ and I tell him that there’s no way I would ever do that to a book, so he goes, ‘The people who can’t even mark the books they buy are scared of letting people in,’ and he says it in this _tone_ – like he is being ironical – and it’s so hard to debate that just because I can never tell if he is being sincere or not. He does that so often and it’s so patronizing, I hate him but then he traps me under him and acts all gentle with his mouth and rough with his hands and we have sex, and it’s so thrilling and amazing that I forget what a little shit he is. To be honest, I was looking forward to the weekend but then-” Minhyuk stops and looks up.

The look on Sangah’s face is of benign happiness, like a little matchmaker’s, behind her Yeojoo’s face is facing the window, completely closed off. It reminds Minhyuk of Hyungwon’s face yesterday night.

“You sound so happy when you talk about him.”

“I guess,” Minhyuk says, swallowing hard to escape the feeling of a pit forming inside him. A pit that grows deeper and deeper until it extends out of Minhyuk and threatens to swallow him instead.

“No, honestly. You sound like you have spent years. Honestly, you guys look good together. Not just,” Sangah’s hand move in a wide motion, “aesthetically because you both are tall lanky boys but also your feelings are pretty. They are all orange with a little purple. It’s pretty. Isn’t it, babe?” She turns around to look at Yeojoo with a smile, Yeojoo continues looking at the window and doesn’t reply. 

***

Minhyuk places the sleeping bag inside his room and looks around at the emptiness. It’s been a week but there’s nothing of him in there. All of his stuff is in Hyungwon’s room because he doesn’t have a door. He didn’t even try. All he had to do was talk with the agent to get a room with a working door, which now he has.

It’s not like he is going to live here for much. Just until something that’s lodged in him passes and he is over this weird transitional phase into singlehood. That was the plan but has he really been single? Because instead of taking all these easy steps to create a space for himself, he barged into Hyungwon’s.

He had called this a one-night stand before their first time. And yet they have been together, attached at the hip, every day now.

Hyungwon makes him feel warm. When he is with Hyungwon, the mess inside him is of highs, the kind that bursts in your chest. When he is with Hyungwon, there’s no past, and there’s no future. Only present that is like a body-warm cotton quilt. So what’s the problem? The problem is precisely that.

Like a warm cotton quilt, there’s no lightness to whatever they have, it’s heavy and it’s completely enveloping and maybe it’s okay for Hyungwon, maybe it’s the norm for him. He did say that he was a recovering serial monogamist. But this isn’t Minhyuk. He is not going to get smitten with a rebound. He is not going to replace Jaehyun with him. That’s not happening.

What Jaehyun and Minhyuk had was special, you do not spend so much time together, the majority of it in love, and not have something special and irreplaceable. Minhyuk can’t cheapen their love. Fuck that. Minhyuk can’t cheapen _his_ love by handing it to someone else within a week.

Handing his heart to a guy who draws out the extremes of Minhyuk? No. Minhyuk isn’t himself with Hyungwon because Minhyuk doesn’t throw water on people to prove a point, he doesn’t act all sickeningly cute for forgiveness, he doesn’t feel abandoned when they leave him for one night, he doesn’t let them be hot and cold to him without explanation and still knock at their door – this needy, emotional, sappy person is _not_ Minhyuk. He is not comfortable with that skin because that skin is..raw. It feels too much. It’s naked, it’s vulnerable and a guy like Hyungwon will not care, will not understand. He would wound Minhyuk without even realizing and throw salt in his hurt for foreplay.

But all of this doesn’t matter, because Minhyuk will not cheapen his love by giving it so fast to someone who threw him out like that – not when Minhyuk needed him so much – and then dragged him in the morning with no explanation as if that’s all Minhyuk’s worth is, to be dragged on his whim.

Minhyuk didn’t even realize that that’s not okay, such cutting, capricious hot and cold behavior isn’t okay. Isn’t he doing that thing again, the one where he falls for the mirage of people? And sure, he hasn’t fallen or anything but still, it’s great to remember that he doesn’t know Hyungwon at all, and what he does know – his hot and cold parts – they tell him that he shouldn’t know more.

It’s time Minhyuk lived with himself, in the space with his name.

***

It’s the afternoon. Minhyuk is making his presentation for tomorrow so when he goes out in the evening, he can drink in peace.

Unlike other people, Minhyuk adequately likes his job. Fresh out of college, when Minhyuk was throwing job titles at Jaehyun while reading them off job portals, he didn’t realize how important Jaehyun’s slight considering pause at “Junior Social Media Marketing associate” would be.

It was July and Jaehyun had been preparing his special soup that he swore up and down was a family recipe which healed every malady that human flesh could incur, and what Minhyuk never had the heart to tell him was just plain ol’ chicken soup. 

He had said, “You should try that. You like people, you like the internet, you like psychology, you like colors. It’s a perfect fit.”

It was said with such harmless authority like it was just factual, something Jaehyun had gathered within 6 months of dating Minhyuk. The soft confidence in those words was such that it made Minhyuk apply to that position in _Indigo_ – the biggest women’s magazine. He didn’t get the job then, so he applied to other places, and throughout the years, he changed businesses and positions, but always kept the same department – social media marketing. There was no need to change it because as Jaehyun had said, he liked people, the internet, psychology, and colors. It was a perfect fit. His love affair just grew until a head-hunter asked him for a Senior Social Media Manager position at Indigo – the magazine suffering from a dwindling print industry and now relying on digital. This happened two years ago. It felt like coming full circle. It felt like destiny. 

So that was Minhyuk, a person who worked for the former biggest women magazine as a social media manager and loved every bit of it as much of a headache it could be at times.

Minhyuk puts it in his notebook. Now, what else? Who was Minhyuk?

Minhyuk circles ‘SMM manager at Indigo’ three times and then puts ‘a dog person’. The other points go as, ‘a good son’, ‘Hoseok and Hyunwoo’s best friend’, ‘whale merchandise collector’, ‘likes talking and cuddling’, ‘would like to get married and have children by 30’. The last one he amends to ‘35’. Satisfied, he closes them all in a wobbly circle and then makes some rays come out of it. These are the permanent aspects of his personality, things that never change. That’s Minhyuk.

He boldens the circles, the strokes turning fainter when he realizes that this is all external – all a reaction to the outside. What’s Minhyuk inside? Is he an angry person? Well, not necessarily. Maybe for a milli-second but then he calms down, and apologizes. Is he calm-headed then? Well, not at all, to be honest. He hits the side of his newly bought chair. Why aren’t there more words? Why is everything in stupid ratios and scales? If he doesn’t have the vocabulary to define himself, then how can he define what he wants? Is he just supposed to collide with people, and go by a _vibe?_ What.

“Knock knock,” Yeojoo says, standing over him rather than at the door.

“Who is it?” Minhyuk says, smiling with a queasy expression.

“Huh? It’s Yeojoo.” 

“It’s a joke. Nevermind. How can I help you this lovely afternoon?”

Yeojoo squints. “What’s the joke?”

Minhyuk leans back and closes his eyes. “I can never tell if you are being serious or pulling my leg.”

“Knock knock.”

“Who is it?”

“Still Yeojoo.”

Minhyuk cracks a smile. “There must be something in your neighborhood water. Both you and Hyungwon are batshit insane in a sane way.” 

“Speaking of Hyungwon-”

Not really wanting to hear a sentence that begins with “Speaking of Hyungwon”, Minhyuk cuts in. “You have a crush on him.”

“Huh?”

Yeojoo’s face looks as confused as when Minhyuk told Hyungwon that he should tie his pair of socks together so that he doesn’t lose one of them.

“You have a crush on Hyungwon.”

“I do? Wow, every day a man tells me something new about myself.”

“I am gay. I can’t be lumped into it.”

“Not on my watch.”

Minhyuk laughs. “Okay, so why were you angry when I was talking about Hyungwon?”

“When?”

“What do you mean when! In the morning, when Sangah was painting me with red nipples which apparently symbolized my sadness.”

“I am a lesbian, Minhyuk.”

“And? I have been watching a lot of French gay women movies and stuff and all of your brethren is sleeping with men, Yeojoo.”

Yeojoo puts a hand on his shoulder in that inside-joke way of theirs. “That’s a lie, Minhyuk.”

Minhyuk puts a hand back. “Are you saying cinema lies? Gasp.”

Yeojoo grins. “By the way, I was looking at the canvas. It was all abstract. She didn’t even use the red color.”

“Well, fuck, then why was I sitting there topless and red nippled?”

“She was pulling your leg.”

Minhyuk groans. “All of you are unhinged.”

“You fit well with us, what does that say about you?”

“Now, why did you have to go and say those words?” Minhyuk says facetiously, ignoring how deep the words cut.

“I wasn’t angry when you were talking about Hyungwon. I was just processing.”

“Damn, can’t you process with a less ‘I will find your family and kill them in front of you’ look on your face?”

“No. Listen, Hyungwon is,” Yeojoo begins and then looks down, shoulders narrowing, “special. Yes, special. I feel protective over him and I am not sure if you both are good for each other at the moment. He is going through things, you are going through things. But you both are adults, so it’s none of my business. I am sorry if I made things awkward. I wasn’t aware that my opinion was so important to you.”

“It is. It’s important.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know that.”

Yeojoo looks up and smiles at him, so open and genuine and normal. “Anyway, Hyungwon has been a lot happier since he met you. It’s nice to see him making a new…” She trails off, unsure.

“Friend.” Minhyuk fills in, something about the word speaking to him.

Yeojoo nods. “Okay, friend. He has been a lot calmer and happier. It’s nice to see him like this. I am a little biased towards him, and he just told me to mind my own business, but he is a knucklehead, so whatever. I know you guys fought, I just wanted to let you know that things are tough at work for him at the moment, so if you are thinking that what you saw at night is him, I think it’s a little unfair and it would be nice if you could talk to him and give him another chance.” 

“It was alright. He wasn’t- I don’t know, he wasn’t necessarily out of bounds to want to have his room. I wish he had done that in some other way and during some other time of the day but I don’t think he was rude or something.”

“It still hurt though, didn’t it?”

Minhyuk presses his lips and exhales. “Yeah. I can’t explain it logically. But, it hurts.”

Yeojoo nods and continues nodding until Minhyuk asks her what.

“Nothing. He is going to the countryside in the evening, I was going to go with him but Sangah’s parents invited us to dinner and I don’t want to be the person who rejects a dinner from her in-laws right before the wedding, so can you go instead of me?”

Minhyuk thinks about it for a moment. “Okay, but only because I want to help you out. It has nothing to do with Hyungwon.”

“Of course.”

***

The train ride is silent. The only sound is of the train moving on the rails which has become a silent noise after three hours. Outside, the depressing small crude houses which house the lower working class of the city have transitioned to wide, open fields and long, thick trees, still visible in the slowly darkening sky.

Hyungwon has a big thermos water bottle in his lap and a small bag between his feet. His hair is tied in a bun and his head is lolling against the window while Minhyuk is reading a paperback he picked up at the railway station at the last moment. It was supposed to be a visible barrier to show Hyungwon that Minhyuk is upset. It didn’t even matter. Hyungwon didn’t even try talking to him. 

Twenty minutes before their station, Hyungwon’s alarm rings, so Minhyuk doesn’t even have the satisfaction of letting the station pass and then blaming Hyungwon.

They get out of the station and Hyungwon tells him to wait there. A minute later, he comes with a rickshaw.

It’s around 8:30 PM. The night isn’t as dark. There are no streetlights but with no buildings and a full moon, everything seems visible enough. The rickshaw stops 10 minutes later. Hyungwon pays an amount that he really shouldn’t. A miser advertiser with no bargaining skills, what a beautiful mess.

They walk down in a clearing between the fields, lighting their path with their phone’s flashlight. The crops reach just below their knees. Hyungwon stops at a small façade with naked bricks, the only structure in miles and miles of fields. It’s as big as a single room in the hospital.

Hyungwon opens the place with a key and again tells Minhyuk to wait. Minhyuk enters along with him anyway. Inside it’s dark, Hyungwon’s phone’s flashlight goes out and he bangs against Minhyuk while looking for something.

Silently, Minhyuk steadies them both and then realizing that he just saved his nemesis' life, he pushes him away. He pretends to not hear Hyungwon’s sigh.

With the help of Minhyuk’s phone’s flashlight, they find an electronic lamp. It lights the room enough for Minhyuk to notice a table, a garden chair, a pot, a little stove, a big trunk with a tiny lock, and a folding cot.

No longer able to curb his curiosity, Minhyuk asks. “Is this your place?”

“Yup.”

“Like, as in, you own it legally?”

Hyungwon picks up the cot, giving Minhyuk an amused look at the word ‘legally’. “Yes, want to see the papers?”

“Did you inherit it or something?”

“Well, it’s complicated. Help me set stuff outside, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

They set the cot beside the house, in a little clearing with no crops. Hyungwon opens the trunk and takes some things out. They put the covers and a pillow on the cot before setting up a mosquito net over it. Minhyuk guesses that they are sleeping outside.

Hyungwon puts the water from the thermos in the pot and puts it beside the cot along with his bag before locking the room.

They get inside the net and look at the stars above. The sky is so full that Minhyuk realizes space is a real thing. It’s not just some imaginary stuff made up for sci-fi. It’s real. They are living on a ball made from gas, floating in an infinite vacuum that’s always expanding.

The sky twinkles.

Fuck, they are so tiny. Their life is so tiny.

Fuck. 

Minhyuk turns and looks at Hyungwon. His hair is open, a ridiculously soft looking frog hairband covering his forehead, and all of this is in the soft moonlight.

“I am upset at you.”

“I know.”

Minhyuk is pissed. “Are you not going to do anything about it?”

“I am thinking of what to do. How much to give you?”

“What?”

“Hmm?”

“What do you mean by ‘how much to give you’?”

“I don’t know. Just a thing I said without realizing.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe start with an ‘I am sorry for kicking you out at 2 am’?”

“It was my room.”

Minhyuk gets up, a quick moment away from lifting the net and storming out to somewhere.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to figure out where because Hyungwon traps him in an embrace. “You are always ready for violence, pumpkin. Calm down.”

Minhyuk grits his teeth and presses his shoulder where it’s touching Hyungwon’s collarbone. “You fucking calm down. What are we doing here?”

Hyungwon puts a hand on Minhyuk’s heart and starts rubbing there, shushing him. “It’s okay. Calm down, love. Calm down. I am getting there. Give me a moment. I am a little slow and you are too fast.”

Minhyuk feels the simultaneous need to go buck wild or give into Hyungwon, melt into him, let his gentle hands and words soothe him into another form – a form that can close its eyes and drift in space forever with a smile.

Minhyuk doesn’t know why he is crying right now.

“Oh no, no. Don’t cry.”

Minhyuk sniffs and the tears come out faster, a drop cutting his face from the corner of his eyes to his chin. Cut into two pieces – something less than half, and something more than half. Two Minhyuks – one crying because of Hyungwon, the other because of Jaehyun. Where is Minhyuk?

Again, where is Minhyuk? 

“Baby, don’t cry or I’ll start crying too. And I am the snotty kind.”

“Shut up.”

“No, seriously.” Hyungwon grabs his face and turns it towards him. “Look.”

Hyungwon is crying too, his eyes pushing out tears like they have a target to fulfill. Minhyuk stares at him for minutes and minutes and the tears never stop, Hyungwon’s eyes and nose turn red, the corners of his mouth turn down, his lips wobble, he sniffs so much, and there’s so much grief in his face. It’s such a bizarre thing to witness that Minhyuk’s own tears dry up as he sits there looking at Hyungwon still crying. He lifts his hand and wipes Hyungwon’s tear, another follows soon. “Stop crying, you baby.”

Hyungwon sniffs and a fat tear reaches Minhyuk’s thumb. “Okay.”

***

“So you can just cry like that? On command.”

“Yes. Want more?”

Minhyuk extends his glass and nods. Hyungwon pours some more water from the pot.

“It’s tasty, right?”

Minhyuk smacks his lips. “It’s just water, Hyungwon.”

“I put it in the new pot. It’s new enough to have that earthy taste. Your taste buds have been numbed by the city.”

“Where were you raised again?”

“Irrelevant.”

Minhyuk smiles into his glass. “How can you just cry like that with no reason?”

Hyungwon squeezes a lemon slice in his glass, followed by a drop of honey, both of them taken out of his bag. “I had a reason.”

“What?”

“You were crying.”

Minhyuk looks at him in confusion. “And that’s enough? Anyone can cry in front of you and it’s enough for you to get crying.”

“If I don’t hold back, yes.”

“How does that work?”

Hyungwon puts up a finger and gulps down his glass in one go. Unnecessary, considering the minutes he spends coughing while Minhyuk rubs his back.

“When I was a kid, they gave me a big crayon box at the summer camp as an award for the ‘brightest imagination’.” Hyungwon says, recovering, and drinking water from Minhyuk’s hands.

“Is this the reason or is it you bragging?”

“Both.” Hyungwon grins. “Okay, so people with great imaginations have great empathy because they can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. That’s why I can cry on command. My mum used to tell me that I would have a hard time living with how soft I was, but here I am, only crying because my pumpkin cried,” Hyungwon says and flicks Minhyuk’s cheek.

“Shut up.” 

Settling down against each other, Minhyuk puts his head on Hyungwon’s upper arm and rubs his sternum, mimicking Hyungwon’s earlier gesture. “What happened yesterday? Why were you in such a foul mood?”

The night has settled all around them. The moon comes and goes with all the thin streaks of clouds in the sky. Minhyuk’s voice is a quiet husky whisper against the rhythm of crickets.

Hyungwon doesn’t say anything for a long minute.

“Are you aware of the phrase ‘the banality of evil’?”

Minhyuk nods against him. He isn’t but he’ll rather try to gather from context than admit it.

“It was said– I guess, coined, by a journalist who was covering Adolf’s Eichmann’s trial. He was a key figure in Holocaust. The phrase means that unthinkable crimes like these aren’t necessarily just done by people who are psychopaths or monsters. It’s also done by normal people who think they are just doing their job. Like this Eichmann dude was. For him, getting Jewish people on the train that carried them to their death was just a logistic problem. He was concerned with the numbers – doing his duty. That’s the banality of evil. It’s not something special, something monstrous. It’s in normal people like us who don’t think of what we are doing in the name of ‘fulfilling our duty’. It’s the evil we do as bystanders and don’t realize because of diffusion of responsibility.”

Hyungwon looks at Minhyuk who nods at him. Hyungwon slides down and puts his head against Minhyuk’s heart. Lifting Minhyuk’s hand, he puts it in his hair.

“Evil is in everyone. We are few circumstances and social pressures away from being evil. Pretty bleak, right?”

Minhyuk nods again, his fingers moving through Hyungwon’s long strands.

“Then there’s this another article published in 2007, I think. It’s called “The Banality of Heroism”. It was written by two people and one of them is the guy who launched the Stanford Prison Experiment. They suggest that being a bystander to evil can make us evil but it can also bring out our inner hero. Because heroism isn’t a special quality, it’s universal. All of us can be evil and heroic. They give these examples of all the people who never did something “heroic” before but when the situation arose, they didn’t hesitate to take action that was needed. Some of them impulsive and some of them are planned. It’s such a sweet, hopeful thing. When I was 16, I read this article every day and promised myself that I won’t be like the people around me who could step in and help me but never did because they considered it not their business. I won’t be that person. I will not be a bystander to evil. I would be heroic in my small ways.”

Hyungwon grabs Minhyuk’s shirt and twists it slightly. The moon hides behind the clouds as if, like Minhyuk, it doesn’t dare to look at Hyungwon.

“I wasn’t met with a lot of kindness as a kid. But that’s whatever now. What is important is that I do my part. It’s not easy to be in advertising, and have inflexible principles. But no matter how annoying it is, this shit matters to me. I worked with this company for so many years, I gave them my early twenties for fuck’s sake and it’s been years. I am great at my job and I work hard for it. I am not a prodigy or whatever. I have worked hard to get where I am. I have always thought that if I worked diligently, people will listen to me when I tell them that certain things aren’t okay. They would believe and they would participate in this banal everyday heroism, and I feel like a naïve kid saying this, but in my heart of hearts, I believed this.

I am aware though how stupidly naïve it is. For some weeks now, I had been fighting with corporate. They want to take in this business that’s doing real bad shit, Minhyuk. Like making children in developing countries work for piss poor money, in fucking piss poor conditions bad. It’s a fucking shit world and I don’t want any part of it. So I tell them this. You would think that the guy who brings and handles the biggest clients would have some kind of power, but, no, I am just a cog of capitalism. I am only great until I am churning profit, and now not only they are taking that shit company’s business but they also took my oldest client away from me and handed it to someone else like it’s nothing. Like I didn’t fucking bleed for them.”

It’s so much and Minhyuk looks into himself to come up with more but this isn’t about him. Right now, it sounds more like Hyungwon needing to say things than hear.

“I am sorry.”

“Yeah. I am sorry for them, too. People are cold, unkind, selfish, self-absorbed and one of these days, I am going to stop caring for them.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It hurts me when you say that.”

Hyungwon looks up. With his hand on the back of Minhyuk’s neck, he gently drags his face down. “Why does it hurt you?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know that you cared so much.”

“Does it change anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want it to change anything. I am still going to bully you if I can get away with it.”

Minhyuk groans. “We were having a moment, you clown.”

“Yes, that’s why it was important to break it.”

“Fine. You still haven’t apologized to me.”

“I apologize,” Hyungwon says, pressing his nose against Minhyuk’s.

“Finally. For what?”

“For hitting your feet with mine. That’s not good manners.”

“And?”

“For telling you to get out of my room.”

“And?”

“For picking you like a princess.”

“Shut up. And?”

“For missing sleeping beside you.”

The smile on Minhyuk’s face lights up suddenly and dims down just as quickly. He becomes acutely aware of their closeness.

Minhyuk looks up to remind himself of the space, of this world being big, and them small. It doesn’t work. It’s just Minhyuk and Hyungwon, pressed against each other like peas in a pod.

Hyungwon taps his head. “Hey. Something on your mind?”

“Yeah. So, you know, when you said ‘something is going here’ during that first time?”

“Yeah.”

“So, yeah, something is going here.” Minhyuk gestures at himself. “I am coming out of a long relationship, and I would like to get used to being alone.”

“Okay.”

“That means-”

“Not talking to me.”

“For fuck’s sake, no. It means no sex. Just friendship.”

“Friendship without the benefits?” Hyungwon asks, his tone stretched like an ancient man learning about mobiles.

Minhyuk grins. “Yes.”

“Aw, man. Can’t we have sex and stop talking to each other instead?”

Minhyuk presses his finger into his arm in warning.

“But it’s so good. Must we? Can’t you get a therapist or something?” Hyungwon whines against Minhyuk's neck.

Minhyuk exhales loudly. “No. Just tonight and then no sex.”

Hyungwon kisses down his neck, pressing deeper and deeper. “I’ll take it. Thank you. Very kind.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Minhyuk smiles up at the sky, stretching his neck and arching his back. “You didn’t tell me if this was your place.”

“It was my great-great-grandfather’s. Some of their farms got subdued because of the nearby dam. The government gave them this field in another state as reparation. They sold it. I bought it back two years ago.”

“So you own it?”

“Yes.”

“Are you rich or something?”

“I am not rich but I am well-off, I guess,” Hyungwon says, sliding Minhyuk’s shirt up. 

Minhyuk lifts his arms to help. “Nice. I have a well-off friend.”

“Yes, friend. Can I suck you off, friend?”

“Go ahead, friend.”

“Thank you, friend. You are so grand, friend. I want to be best friends with you, know every bit of you, feel every vein of yours against my tongue,” Hyungwon says, licking down from his navel while unbuttoning Minhyuk’s jeans.

“Very weird metaphor, friend.”

“Is it? I was talking to your cock, friend.”

Minhyuk hits his head. “Get on with it.”

“Fine, you know the rules. Don’t move, I’ll set the pace and absolutely no yanking.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Thank you, friend.”

“No problem, friend.” 

**Author's Note:**

> WHO HURT YOU? AT LEAST LEAVE A FUCKING KUDOS, YOU BRATS.
> 
> The premise of guardianship and living in an abandoned hospital has been taken from a show called Crashing made by Phoebe Waller-Bridge of Fleabag fame. 
> 
> I would like to thank [OverTheMoonshine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverTheMoonShine/pseuds/OverTheMoonShine) for being a G.O.A.T. because I was going through a tough time for a while and she was like super warm and kind to me, and it helped lots. Otherwise, she has nothing to do with this fic, it's ALL ME. PRAISE ME. DEPLORE ME. I am the king and pauper of your kingdom- ahem. So, yeah, will try to update it within 3 weeks. Ty. 
> 
> Validate your citizenship at: 
> 
> Twitter: [@crankyminwon](https://twitter.com/crankyminwon)  
> Curiouscat for the mysterious anon ones: [Mellowminhyuk](curiouscat.me/MellowMinhyuk)


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